Homework - Cyril Wichers
Chris Ellerby
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Chris Ellerby
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Chris Ellerby
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It's actually a project that I did earlier, but as it's only meant to show we understand how the Pololu software works, I hope this is ok.
A couple of weeks ago, I used several Pololu Maestro's to control both standard and custom built servos that I used in a couple of mechanisms for a Rube Goldberg machine.
In this picture you can see the motor controllers on the left and the Pololu board on the right (sorry for the messy wiring, I had to do some last minute changes on site)
I've got two channels (18 and 19) configured as inputs. They are connected through relais to the showcontrol. If one of the inputs is pulled low, one of the two movements that I put in the script is executed.
Here's the status page with the mechanism at rest.
Here are my channel settings. You can see the custom endpoint, startup, speed and acceleration settings.
And this is the script.
Basically:
- when channel 18 is pulled low, the servo on channel 0 goes to position 1 (4800)
- 3.5 seconds later it goes to position 2 (5650)
- 3.5 seconds later it returns to it's home position (4000)
- when channel 19 is pulled low, the servo on channel 0 goes to position 1 (4800)
- 3.5 seconds later the servo on channel 1 goes to position 1 (6420)
- 2.5 seconds after that, the servo on channel 1 goes back to it's home position (4800)
- 3.5 seconds after that, the servo on channel 0 goes back to it's home position (4000).
This is what the mechanism looks like:
And this is what it looks like when channel 19 is pulled low (sorry for the shaky image):
At first I tried to animate one servo using the data generated by Maya and copying it to the Maestro controller the way that Craig demonstrated during the course.
Then I remembered that I still had an old eye-mechanism gathering dust somewhere, so I decided to try and animate that.
I made the virtual servo connections for the horizontal and vertical eye movement using the eye controls in AnimServo. Then I created two virtual servo's to animate the blinking and the eye tracking.
I had hoped to be able to parent the vertical eye movement to the eye tracking, but I couldn't get that to work.
I also tried briefly to connect the "Blink" sliders in the Female-soldier model to my servo output, but ran out of time.
So I decided to just set the key frames for those motions manually.
I hope Craig can take some time to explain if and how this can be done with the software during the next class. I also hope he'll go in to how to set up a model like the Female-soldier and how to animate it using motion capture data.
Unfortunately I won't be able to join you live for the next class. I can't wait to watch the video once I get back home!
Maestro status:
Maestro channel settings:
Values to put in to Maya:
Servo setup in Maya. The virtual servos for the blinks and the eye tracking can be seen in the right hand corner of the screen:
Data generated by AnimServo:
Playblast:
Output on eye mechanism:
Unfortunately, I've been very busy with work for the last couple of weeks, so I had to request for an extension of the deadline for my homework (which was fortunately granted). Hopefully I'll be able to catch up in the coming weeks.
Thanks for the update. I am very interested to see your progress and your overall impression when completed. Have you gotten as far as exporting Maya data to the servo controller?
First thing I wanted to do was to try and do some simple modelling and animating in Maya, so I recreated the arm that Craig used as an example in the second part of the course.
And rendered:
And here's the output for the Pololu board:
I also managed to do a motion capture using Faceware Analyzer and use the data to animate the Female soldier model using Retargeter, but I'm not happy with the results so far, so I'm going to redo that.
Also "un-parenting" hasn't worked all the well for me. Good luck!